Penn Badgley Opened Up About Being Molested By Fans

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, quite a few men have spoken up about their own experiences with sexual harassment and assault, helping to shatter the stigma surrounding it. Public figures like Terry Crews and Anthony Rapp have discussed their own alleged experiences with sexual misconduct, and now, in a new interview, Penn Badgley is speaking about his own.

Recently, in an interview with the Daily Beast Penn Badgley revealed that he has “literally been molested” since Gossip Girl launched him and his career into the spotlight. While discussing his newest role as an obsessive stalker named Joe in the new psychological thriller You, Penn opened up about the negative aspects of fame, and what it feels like to be on the receiving end of people’s obsessions.

"I think as an actor you can become an object of desire, which is something women are already accustomed to more or less around the world — I've definitely been, I mean I don't want to sound sensationalist, but I've literally been molested — just in the literal sense of the word — by many people in the moment. Because that's what they do,” Penn said. In his answer, he also echoed the larger conversation about how women are made to deal with unwanted touches and advances in public settings on a daily basis.

In his analysis of the downsides to fame and people feeling like they’re entitled to your time and your body, Penn brought up other men who have been impacted by sexual assault and have discussed their stories within the #MeToo movement, including Terry Crews. He also talked about how people expect you to always be excited about any attention and obsession you receive as a celebrity, saying, "You're led as a man, particularly, that when it happens you should feel great about it. Particularly when it comes from someone who's feasibly an object of your desire as well.” In his new show You, he said the scary thing is that his character Joe “looks like me, he acts and talks like me to a degree,” which is why he thinks the audience is “supposed to be like, 'Aw that might be nice if someone was that infatuated with me.'"

However, Penn wants people to know how important personal space and respecting boundaries is, and that no form of obsession is cute when it hurts someone else or makes them feel uncomfortable. “These things very much happen, you know.”

Penn said he thinks the show is sparking necessary conversations that it may not have had it come out a few years earlier. “I think that a lot of the conversations that we’re having around the show are elevated and have a depth that I really appreciate because, for all the faults and all of the perils of the times we live in, we are becoming more sensitive to some things,” he said, citing the #MeToo movement. “I think it’s significant that a show like this is coming out now, because if it had come out any other time, we might not have been having these necessary conversations around it. And we might have been all too ready to consume something that I think actually has some really dangerous seeds in it.” This is also why, Penn explained, he pushed for his character Joe to be as unpalatable and obviously creepy as possible.